Minecraft is an ever-evolving world that has something new to offer players with each update. With its recent release, The Caves & Cliffs Update brought gamers a breathtaking surprise, lush caves!
These enchanting biomes are mysterious and beautiful subterranean realms filled with vibrant fauna and flora, unique blocks, hidden treasures, and strange creatures.
Read on for an in-depth look at these captivating environments and how you can make the most out of their secrets.
What Are Lush Caves?
Lush caves are only available to those playing version 1.18 or later of Minecraft. They provide a verdant experience rivaled by no other biome within the game’s vast underground realms.
Even though they are structured like wide and open cave systems, these lush environments can mostly be identified by their unique blocks, plants, and mobs.
Let’s dive into some of its distinctive features.
How to Find a Lush Cave Biome?
First things first, finding a Lush Cave biome…
There are a few ways to locate Lush Cave biomes, and I’m going to show them to you right now:
Method #1: Look for an Azalea Tree
Even though Lush Caves are cave biomes (underground biomes), their location can easily be identified by locating an Azalea tree on the surface.
Found the tree? Great. Right underneath it, there’s a Lush Cave biome, guaranteed.
Now you must be thinking that it’s not that easy to locate a single tree in an entire biome, and you’d be right. Except, there is more than one tree, and an Azalea tree can really stand out in some environments. To find them, I’ll explain some things about where Lush Cave biomes generate.
There are essentially two strategies to find that tree
Play For Your Odds
Lush Caves can be found under all surface biomes except for Forests (Forest and Flower Forest) and grassland biomes (Plains, Sunflower Plains, Meadow, Cherry Grove, Savana, etc…). The more humid the biome is, the higher the likelihood of a Lush Cave generating beneath it, making Dark Forests, Jungles, and similar biomes a great way to start looking for them.
Where Would an Azalea Tree Stand Out the Most?
Other biomes, such as a desert, can make an Azalea tree easily visible from many chunks away.
Make a trip to the closest desert, increase the render distance, bring a spyglass, and look for a tree.
Method #2: Peek Through Ravines and Huge Caves
Sometimes, Lush Caves can even be spotted from the surface through a ravine or a wide and deep cave, so keep your eyes open for these, too.
Method #3: Chunk Base
Chunk Base, in case you didn’t know, is a website that hosts many apps designed to find different things in Minecraft. The app we’ll look for today is the Biome Finder.
Just enter your world seed, make sure to highlight the lush caves biomes, and set the biome height to ‘underground’.
What Will You Find In a Lush Caves Biome?
Unique Blocks and Items
Lush caves contain a variety of unique blocks that make them captivating and special. From Rooted Dirt to Cave Vines, these blocks provide opportunities for creative building projects with a touch of natural beauty.
The presence of Dripstone Blocks adds an extra layer of intrigue as their structures can often look lifelike when incorporated into cave systems belowground! Let’s take a closer look:
Azalea and Flowering Azalea
These two types of bushes are exclusive to this biome. Both are mainly decorative, although they can grow into a full tree, be used in a composter, and as a fuel source.
Clay
Although not exclusive to Lush Caves, the unimaginable amount of Clay in Lush Caves is completely unique.
Glow Berries
Growing on vines throughout this biome are special berries that emit light when eaten or planted, perfect for illuminating dark tunnels and providing a small amount of hunger restoration, perfect as a backup food source.
Hanging Roots
Another decorative block native to this biome. It is one of very few blocks that can only be placed on the bottom side of other blocks.
Moss Block and Moss Carpet
Moss blocks are useful for clearing big amounts of cobblestone fast, as they are spread to them when used with bonemeal. Moss carpets are purely decorative, but their color is the closest to plain grass, making them perfect for adding some variety to bases or to hide collection systems, etc…
Rooted Dirt
This special type of dirt serves as a base for many builds within the biome and is especially useful when creating landscaping projects or structures with natural beauty, such as treehouses.
Small and Big Dripleaf
The Small Dripleaf is mostly a decorative plant, but once planted (underwater), you can bonemeal it to grow a Big Dripleaf, a platforming block used for traps, and with Redstone.
Spore Blossom
A light and particles emitting flower that grows exclusively in Lush Caves. Just like Hanging Roots, you can find it only on ceilings because it can only be placed on the bottom part of blocks.
Vines and Cave Vines
These hanging vines are perfect for creative traversals throughout the underground landscape while adding an extra touch of greenery to your building endeavors.
Lush Cave Mobs & Resources
Lush caves provide a unique and thrilling experience for players, thanks to its wide variety of mobs.
From the adorable axolotls that roam in the underground waters, which can be tamed using water buckets, to luminous glow squids that add an enchanting ambiance within these subterranean realms, as well as bats fluttering through the tunnels, the possibilities here are truly endless!
Here’s a list of some mobs found in lush caves:
Axolotl
The adorable axolotls found in lush caves roam beneath the surface waters but can be tamed using water buckets to become loyal companions on journeys deep below ground!
Bats
Though not exclusive to lush caves, bats can still provide a spooky atmosphere while roaming within these subterranean realms.
Glow Squid
As if the lush cave wasn’t already enchanting enough, adding glowing glow squid to the mix makes it next level! These luminous creatures can be found swimming through underground waters and result in an incredibly immersive experience.
Tropical Fish
Tropical fish of all shapes and colors are extremely common in this biome. They exist in most ponds, at least not those containing Axolotls.
Exploration Tips & Tricks
Now that you know how to find it, and what waits for you there, here are a few tips for exploring these caves:
Illumination is Key
The light from the ceiling of Lush Cave biomes can sometimes make you think your light level is higher than it is. In fact, hostile mobs can spawn in most areas on the ground of lush caves, so bring a few torches to light the area.
Use Ender Pearls Wisely
For a quick and easy way to find entrance into the lush caves, why not use some Ender Pearls? Some areas are hard to get to, and there’s a moment when you’ll get tired of towering up using dirt or other blocks.
What to Bring to a Lush Cave Exploration?
In addition to the usual supplies players take to exploration trips (such as good armor, weapons, a bed, food, and maybe a map, there are a couple of must-have items that will make any exploration trip to Lush Caves easier and more fruitful.
- Buckets, and many of them – Useful for bringing unique Tropical Fish and Axolotls back home.
- Shears – For collecting Small Dripleaves and Glow Berries.
- Hoe – To dig faster through all the moss
- Shovel – To collect clay
- Shulker Boxes – You can easily fill your inventory with thousands of blocks and items from a single trip. You should make sure you have room for everything.
- Torches – These are caves, after all.
Conclusion
Minecraft’s lush caves give players a verdant experience filled with mysterious secrets beneath its surface, awaiting discovery by brave adventurers.
With this guide as a reference for finding entrance points into such biomes above ground and tips/tricks once below ground coupled together with inspiring building ideas specifically tailored to fit each region’s features, you can make the most out of your explorations in the depths below.
So what are you waiting for? Dig down into the underground and unlock all there is to know about lush caves!